You know what’s even better than serving on an award committee? Having someone else write about it. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was on the judging committee for this year’s Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards alongside Chair Joanna Rudge Long and Roxanne Feldman. It was Roxanne who reported on our discussion, and even took […]

As I write this there are countless souls right now in Las Vegas attending the American Library Association Annual Conference. I watch your tweets with envy, my friends. Would that I were there. Some of the first timers have asked me what they shouldn’t miss, but since I haven’t seen the official schedule of events […]

Morning, folks. Bird here. Seems this book I’ve written with fellow bloggers Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children’s Books and Jules Danielson of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is in the last stages of completion. Fun With Copyedits is the name of the game this week, which means that my blogging may suffer a tad here […]

Full credit to the good people of Sterling for keeping a handy coffin on hand! So Friday actually was a bigger kick-off of than I initially led you to believe, and on the conference floor it was all anyone could talk about. I alluded to it briefly but hadn’t expected the conversations about it to […]

Oh, you think the award season is done, old bean? Why we have only but BEGUN to hand out the 2011 awards! The Newberys, Caldecotts, and other ALA Media Awards are just the tip of the old iceberg. There are so many others to explore. For example, did you get a chance to really examine […]

As you may have heard, last week author William Sleator passed away. I met him once during the Midwinter ALA Conference in Philadelphia. He was part of an Abrams brunch in which librarians munched on food and spoke to various authors. I was pleased to get Mr. Sleator’s autograph on a book for a friend […]

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About A Fuse #8 Production

Features everything from librarian previews of upcoming children's books to news, reviews, and videos. If it has something to do with children's literature, it will rate a mention here.

Betsy Bird is the Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She's reviewed for The New York Times and Kirkus, writes articles for Horn Book and SLJ, and wrote the picture book Giant Dance Party. You can contact her at Fusenumber8@gmail.com or follow her on . . .